


alcoholic apocalypse

by angelheartbeat



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Apocalypse, Brainwashing, Drunkenness, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 14:24:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18012584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheartbeat/pseuds/angelheartbeat
Summary: There's a cold chill in the air, accompanied by an upbeat tune, and all the sane can do to combat it is drink and drink and pray for a miracle.Both Henry and Ted gave up praying a long time ago.





	alcoholic apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> hmm............. smells bad already
> 
> this is in an au where they all already knew each other prior to the apotheosis

"This isn't how I theorised it, Ted."

Hidgens swallows around his words as he steadies the aim of a shaking hand and sends the dart soaring through the air. It misses its mark entirely, and embeds itself beside the others in the doorframe. Hidgens curses. He used to hit the bullseye every time.

They're alone in the room. Somewhere nearby, Emma is laid on the floor, eyes closed. She was muttering to herself when they slipped out of the room. Paul and Bill are gone - dead, most likely. There's a reason Hidgens never had children.

The floor beneath his feet is sticky as he strides to pluck the darts free, and he tries to not think about the blood on his shoes and his hands and his conscience. Charlotte was dead and gone, as was her husband. No point reminiscing about the dead. There's nothing to be done for them. Hidgens knew that all too well.

"How'd you theorise it," Ted says, but its not a question. Its a dull statement in a rough voice that knows all too well how soon it will be silenced. He's sat slouched at the table nearby, stabbing a spare dart into the table over, and over, and over. His other hand is loosely wrapped around the neck of a whiskey bottle, thumb rubbing against the rim periodically.

"I suppose I pictured myself as the hero," Hidgens muses as he misses again. His throws are getting more violent, and less accurate. "Not the recluse shut away in his house waiting for the end of the world to get to him first."

"Isn't that what you've been doing for the past thirty years? Hiding from the end of the world?"

Stab. Dart in the table. Stab. Swig from the bottle. Stab. Hidgens misses again. Stab.

"It was never so.. close, before."

And that's true. If they stand by the window and strain their ears, they can hear the distant harmonies of certain death. Death, or maybe something worse. For all his theories, and worries, and loneliness, Hidgens could have never predicted exactly how forlorn the apocalypse would feel. Not a catastrophe, nor any great finale, but instead a gentle fadeout into... something. Perhaps something... nice?

Ted snorts, swigs the whiskey some more. Hidgens snatches his darts free from the door again, and looks at them in his hand long enough for his vision to blur together into swimming colours. Then he throws them onto the table, and himself into a chair.

"Pass the whiskey," he tells Ted. Ted complies, before jerkily standing up and rifling through the cupboards to retrieve himself a new bottle or three.

"Cheers," he says drily as he sits back down, clinking the bottles together hard enough to echo painfully in the silent room. Hidgens nods, wincing.

There's not much you can say, even to a friend, when you're hyperaware of how close you both are to death. Or even, hyperaware that the other might not be what they say, but something more sinister. And both men would consider each other a friend at this point. Had a meteor not interrupted, they might both be leaning towards a little more than that.

"I wanted to be in musical theatre once," Hidgens comments, wiping whiskey from his lips. "I could see myself on Broadway, dancing my way to a brighter tomorrow."

"Alright, Annie."

Hidgens chuckles. "I know. A stupid dream, from a younger time. I'm sure you have similarly unattainable passions."

Ted leans back in his chair, swigging his whiskey. "I don't think I have passions."

"Everyone has a passion, Ted."

Ted shrugs. "Do they?"

"But thats..." Horrific. Lonely. "Impossible."

"I guess I wanted to be a cop when I was a kid. Now I just fuck the wife of one." Ted chuckles for a moment, before it trails into a tense silence. Empty eyes shift to the rifle propped up in the corner. "Or.. I did, I guess."

A hand lands on his arm. "Charlotte was no more," Hidgens says, as comfortingly as he can. "She wasn't the woman you loved."

"I didn't love her," Ted rebuffs. He doesn't mean it, and Hidgens can tell.

"Ted," Hidgens continues, and his usual dramatic intensity has melted into gentle sincerity. "I know how it feels to have loved and lost."

Ted swallows, eyes meeting Hidgens', and nods. "I know."

Hidgens opens his mouth to say something more, but he's cut off as Ted leans forward and kisses him.

He tastes like whiskey. Hidgens doesn't know what he expected (not this, nothing like this, nothing so wonderful in the midst of such horror), but its not unpleasant. Its nice, and warm, and oddly familiar. Its over far too soon.

Hidgens must whisper something without noticing, because Ted chuckles and rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. "If we're gonna die, might as well go out at least somewhat satisfied, huh?"

They fall back into discomfort and silence, static crackling in the air. The music outside has grown louder. Voices pitched in perfect harmony seep through the cracks in the walls, inhuman and cheerful.

The chords strike nerves in Hidgens' chest, twang at his heartstrings like those of a guitar. Most of his mind longs to stay here, drink away whats left of his life with Ted. No matter how hard he tries to stifle it, though, some tiny part of his brain is resonating with those harmonies, is pulling his heart elsewhere, is disregarding all his faults for the unity outside.

The apocalypse is forlorn, yes. But perhaps it doesn't have to be.

"No," Hidgens whispers to himself, and almost shudders at the musicality in his tone. A shifty glance at Ted reveals no change in his expression.

Even when he was young and hopeful, Hidgens had always been susceptible to whims and pressures. His spontaneity served him well in some ways, laid a curse on him in others. The slightest amount of coercing could pull him in any direction.

Hidgens thinks back to the blue goop sat on his desk in a beaker, innocent as can be. The very essence of world peace, distilled into a slimy substance. Oh, how easy would it- no!

No. He cannot. 

"Kiss me again," he orders Ted, as basslines and melodies thrum in his head. This isn't how he theorised it. 

Ted shrugs and complies, and for a minute the alcohol on his breath and the warmth of his hand on Hidgens' face is enough to drown out the infected. Its not long enough. Its over far too soon.

"Again."

Its over far too soon.

"Again."

They're too close now, voices seeping into Hidgens' brain every second, entwining notes with his blood and bones and brain. Ted looks at him in confusion.

"Can you hear them?" Hidgens whispers.

"Hear who?"

"The infected. The singers. They're just outside, I can feel it, I can hear them, I-"

He cuts himself off, running to the window and catching his breath. There are no hordes of singers at his gate. There is no one for miles. And yet, the singing is boring into his skull. Where he had to strain to hear them barely a few minutes before, they now deafen him.

"You're freakin' me out," Ted says, frowning.

Hidgens turns around, and smiles.

He is something more sinister.

He is a lost passion, his joy dissipated in years of solitude and loneliness, reignited in the one thing he feared for so long - the end of the world. He is the end of the world, the aria to rule them all. He is connected to a central brain, and he smiles.

With practiced ease, he pulls the dart from the point in the table Ted had stabbed it so many times. He tosses it straight and true. 

It hits the bullseye.

* * *

Later, when he is tying Ted to a chair, he regrets it for a moment. Part of his brain is still humanly innocent, after all, unaffected by the invisible voices or the blue goop he examined oh-so-carefully. He is not yet gone, and he cringes at his own horrors. He has killed two already, just today (they weren't human, Hidgens, they were  _us,_ they were  _you, they were me_ ), and now he will sacrifice two more. Three, if you count himself.

He is forlorn and lonely, he thinks, and has been for a while. But no longer. Soon, he will not be himself. He will be a part of the hivemind. He will be a harbringer of peace in his passion.

And as he hits the first few notes on his keyboard, and watches the terror fill Ted's eyes - and Emma's, too, a girl with such potential - he can feel himself draining away. A fate worse than death - to be trapped within himself, alone. But he is happy. He is singing. He is the new dawn, and he will stop the show.

Its exactly as he theorised.

 

**Author's Note:**

> ok WOW that did not go as planned??? what the fuck happened
> 
> that was very incoherent I can tell im tired as fuck
> 
> comment ya privileged fucks


End file.
